Editing Patricia Highsmith (section)

==Early life==
Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in [[Fort Worth, Texas]] on January 19, 1921. She was the only child of commercial artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889–1975) and Mary Plangman (''[[Given name#Nee|née]]'' Coates; September 13, 1895 – March 12, 1991). Her father had not wanted a child and had persuaded her mother to have an abortion. Her mother, after a failed attempt to [[Abortion|abort]] her by drinking [[turpentine]], decided to leave Plangman. The couple divorced nine days before their daughter's birth.<ref name="Schenkar2009">{{cite book |last1=Schenkar |first1=Joan |url=https://archive.org/details/talentedmisshigh0000sche |title=The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith |date=2009 |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]] |isbn=978-0312303754 |edition=1st |location=New York |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Rp|pages=63–64}}

In 1927 Highsmith moved to New York City to live with her mother and her stepfather, commercial artist Stanley Highsmith, whom her mother had married in 1924.<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=565}} Patricia excelled at school and read widely, including works by [[Jack London]], [[Louisa May Alcott]], [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], [[Bram Stoker]], and [[John Ruskin]].<ref name="Wilson2003">{{Cite book |last=Wilson |first=Andrew |title=Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith |publisher=Bloomsbury |year=2003 |isbn=1582341982 |location=New York and London}}</ref>{{Rp|pages=33–42}}  At the age of nine, she became fascinated by the case histories of abnormal psychology in ''The Human Mind'' by [[Karl Menninger]], a popularizer of [[Freudian]] analysis.<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=92}}

In the summer of 1933, Highsmith attended a girls' camp and the letters she wrote home were published as a story two years later in ''Woman's World'' magazine. She received $25 for the story.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=44, 55}} After returning from camp, she was sent to Fort Worth and lived with her maternal grandmother for a year.<ref name="von Planta2021">{{cite book|editor1-last=von Planta |editor1-first=Anna |title=Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941–1995 |date=2021 |edition=1st |page=2 |publisher=[[Liveright Publishing]] |location=New York |isbn=978-1324090991 |chapter=1921–1940: The Early Years |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=20MfEAAAQBAJ&dq=Patricia+Highsmith:+Her+Diaries+and+Notebooks,+1941%E2%80%931995&pg=PT14}}</ref> She called this the "saddest year" of her life and felt "abandoned" by her mother. In 1934 she returned to New York to live with her mother and stepfather in [[Greenwich Village]], Manhattan.<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|pages=565–566}} She was unhappy at home. She hated her stepfather and developed a life-long love–hate relationship with her mother, which she later fictionalized in stories such as "[[The Terrapin]]", about a young boy who stabs his mother to death.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|page=55}}<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=|pages=64, 84, 100–102}}

She attended the all-girl [[Julia Richman High School]] where she achieved a B minus average grade.<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=112}} She continued to read widely{{Mdash}}[[Edgar Allan Poe]] was a favorite{{Mdash}}and began writing short stories and a journal. Her story "Primroses Are Pink" was published in the school literary magazine.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=49–58}}

In 1938 Highsmith entered [[Barnard College]] where her studies included English literature, playwriting and short story composition. Fellow students considered her a loner who guarded her privacy but she formed a life-long friendship with fellow student Kate Kingsley Skattebol. She continued to read voraciously, kept diaries and notebooks, and developed an interest in [[eastern philosophy]], [[Marx]] and [[Freud]]. She also read [[Thomas Wolfe]], [[Marcel Proust]] and [[Julien Green]] with admiration. She published nine stories in the college literary magazine and became its editor in her senior year.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=63–73, 90–92}}